Art District on Santa Fe :Buzz

"Makin Noise: A Pussy Riot Beer" was first produced in December at Goldspot Brewing.

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Female brewers in Denver, Colo. are taking a stand against oppression, sexism and anti-LGBT sentiments by collaborating to produce a series of craft brews that will be released leading up to president-elect Donald Trump's inauguration later this month.

The first batch of "Makin Noise: A Pussy Riot Beer" was produced on Dec. 28 at Goldspot Brewing. Kelissa Hieber, Goldspot's head brewer and one of the group's key organizers, told FoxNews.com that the goal of the project isn't about promoting anti-Trumpism (though she admitted to Westword that many felt "defeated" and "helpless" after the election) but rather to foster unity among likeminded individuals and beer lovers.

"Despite a kneejerk reaction to assume that an inauguration day release insinuates a protest to Trump, however our only desire for this beer to to insight a larger sense of community and to stand up against injustice," Hieber said.

Think of Colorado, and you probably picture the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies. But nearly half of the state lies on the high plains to the east of the mountains. The terrain is no less scenic, especially when seen from above.

"I love looking at the landscape and understanding how everything fits together," says Evan Anderman, who spends hours taking aerial photos from the cockpit of his plane, 1,500 feet above the plains.

His gorgeous images, taken during some 200 flights, capture the breadth of the plains and its industry. Fields of wheat, millet, and hay wave in the breeze. Cattle graze on rangeland. Factories, mines, and oil rigs dot the land. "Every square inch out there has been affected [by industry] in one way or another," Anderman says.

The system opened two new rail lines this year -- one to the city's airport and one to northern suburbs -- both operated under contract by private company Denver Transit Partners LLC. Two more lines are scheduled to open by the end of 2016.

Financially, RTD is "basically doing everything right," said Jeff Brown, who researches public-transit system finances and is chairman of Florida State University's Department of Urban and Regional Planning.

Still, in 2013 the RTD spent the most in capital costs per passenger ride among the nation's 15 largest transit agencies, due to the cost of its buildout. And it isn't immune from economic concerns.

Denver ranked on the list high due to its parks, proximity to the Rockies, transit, music and beer -- plus legal marijuana.

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Denver is one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation, boasting 83,000 new residents since 2010. Educated millennials lead the charge, drawn to Denver's cool music scene, dozens of breweries, public transportation network -- including bike share -- and, in some cases, the legalization of marijuana in Colorado.

For example, in Denver in the late 1990s, voters rejected a plan. Later, they approved a sales tax for light rail. That was only after advocates spoke to tens of thousands of residents, and found pockets of support among young professionals and, surprisingly, retirees.

"One of the biggest pockets of support were retired women over the age of 65, because they saw it as the first opportunity for them to come back into downtown and see a show at the performing arts center and have lunch together with the girls," said Kathleen Osher with Denver's Transit Alliance.

A decade ago, travelers arriving at Denver's sprawling new airport would look out over a vast expanse of flat, prairie dog-infested grassland and wonder if their plane had somehow fallen short of its destination. The $4.9 billion airport -- at 53 square miles, larger than Manhattan -- was derided as being "halfway to Kansas," and given the emptiness of the 23-mile drive to the city, it felt that way.

Last month, arriving visitors boarded the first trains headed for downtown, a journey that zips past a new Japanese-style "smart city" emerging from the prairie before depositing passengers 37 minutes later in a bustling urban hive of restaurants, shops and residential towers that only six years ago was a gravelly no man's land -- an entire $2 billion downtown neighborhood that's mushroomed up around the hub of Denver's rapidly expanding light rail system.

The 22.8-mile spur from the airport to downtown is the latest addition to a regional rail system that has transformed Denver and its suburbs. Using an unprecedented public-private partnership that combines private funding, local tax dollars and federal grants, Denver has done something no other major metro area has accomplished in the past decade, though a number of cities have tried. At a moment when aging mass transit systems in several major cities are capturing headlines for mismanagement, chronic delays and even deaths, Denver is unveiling a shiny new and widely praised network: 68 stations along 10 different spurs, covering 98 miles, with another 15 miles still to come. Even before the new lines opened, 77,000 people were riding light rail each day, making it the eighth-largest system in the country even though Denver is not in the top 20 cities for population. The effects on the region's quality of life have been measurable and also surprising, even to the project's most committed advocates. Originally intended to unclog congested highways and defeat a stubborn brown smog that was as unhealthy as it was ugly, the new rail system has proven that its greatest value is the remarkable changes in land use its stations have prompted, from revitalizing moribund neighborhoods, like the area around Union Station, to creating new communities where once there was only sprawl or buffalo grass.

The Charlotte Observer ran a story focused on regional collaboration that painted Denver as a transit model for other cities.

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The Denver area has a long history of regionalism, in part due to necessity: The region makes up a majority of the state's population and tax receipts, so there's no other game in town, so to speak. The transit system has been run by a regional entity that covers multiple counties since its inception.

But that doesn't mean cooperation has always come easily. In 1997, the first attempt at a ballot measure for a regional sales tax increase to pay for an expanded system went down 57 to 43 percent.

"People say, did you all wake up one morning and decide to cooperate? We didn't," said Maria Garcia Berry of CRL Associates, a public policy firm that helped craft the successful 2004 ballot campaign.

Masks of presidential candidates made by Landon Meier of Hyperflesh were the talk of Monsterpalooza in Pasadena, reports HuffPost. The Denver-based maskmaker specializes in ultra-realistic masks of celebrities, with previous likenesses of Charlie Sheen, Peter Dinklage, babies, Mike Tyson and Breaking Bad's Walter White to his credit.

If you don’t know the answer to a question, just say so. If I ask you a question, I probably know the answer so I’ll know if you’re BS-ing me. It almost always results in me mentally dismissing you, because if you can’t know yourself well enough when you’re trying to get a job, you’re going to really fail when it counts.

Violent Femmes frontman Gordon Gano praised the cheese enchilada from a Denver landmark in a recent interview with The Guardian.

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I like Mexican food very much, and this is my all-time favourite Mexican restaurant. One thing that’s very popular in Denver and the southwest of the United States is green chilli, and theirs is just a beautiful balance of the flavours. It goes on whatever you’re ordering. I’m vegetarian, so it limits what I get, but theirs is the best cheese enchilada I’ve ever had.

THERE IS A single line of purple seats at the Colorado Rockies' Coors Field, indicating a height of 5,280 feet above sea level. Such reminders that you're in the Mile High City are never far away in Denver, but this town has quietly risen above its reputation for thin air, bearded skiers and a mega-hub airport; it's now equally known for world-class food along with insane vistas and other outdoor pursuits that don't involve $160 lift tickets. My family has its little secret go-to spot in the Caribbean, but the kids wanted to try something new this winter, so we decided to give Denver a few days to win us over.

Chloe, an amateur photographer, is a sophomore at NYU. Sam is a sports-loving high school pitcher, and Jonah, 12, had to be torn away from his computer to make the flight. My wife, Leslie, a super-healthy foodie, headed up planning.

Denver isn't really in the Rocky Mountains. It's more of a base camp at their edge: the last flat spot to pitch your tent as you head west for gold. All of the visitor literature warns that you will get winded walking up stairs and tipsy on a single beer, but, given our mild, touristy level of physical exertion, all the thin air did was stoke our appetites, which was fine, because Leslie had a long list of restaurants she wanted to try.

In a former bakery south of downtown Denver, Matthew Fuerst makes beer flavored with ingredients like Hatch green chiles that he chops by hand. He saves money on heating bills by pushing up space heaters against his fermenting tanks and covering the tops with blankets. He's invited homebrewers who want to break into the industry to use his expensive brewing system to try making larger batches.

Fuerst is one of many transplants lured to Colorado by the state's reputation as a place where beer drinkers spend hours on breweries' sunny patios trying every imaginable twist on beer, often with dogs and kids in tow, a state whose governor is a former craft beer magnate who had an array of taps installed at the governor's mansion. But Fuerst fears that idyllic lifestyle is in danger now that the world's largest beer maker, Anheuser-Busch InBev, has staked a claim to Colorado's craft beer paradise.

Fuerst worries InBev could use its distribution leverage and buying power to squeeze other craft beers out of liquor store shelves, discount its own craft beer line and buy up raw materials after its purchase last month of Breckenridge Brewery, which was part of the first wave of craft breweries to open in Colorado in the 1990s.

Experts conducted research, united behind well-defined goals, engaged the best partners and won public confidence by presenting achievable plans. They prioritized based on the best available data rather than political interests, selected the best partners through fair, transparent processes and negotiated agreements focused on best value and not only lowest cost. They did this in record time and now have one of America's most livable big cities.

In this growing scene, energy is ebullient, artwork is edgy, curators are risk takers, and the openings are impressively populated. However, this grassrootsy-ness, though delightful, tends to go hand-in-hand with a pervasive unchecked-ness in which the energy for arts and artists overflows the current infrastructure of support that promotes, challenges, and ultimately propels artists forward. This is evidenced, for example, by the widespread presence of artist cooperatives. There are many advantages to the artist co-op model, and there are benefits for artists. However, the disadvantage of having so many is that art is made and shown out of pace with the other necessary factors of support: criticism, curation, consumption.

Despite these criticisms, Denver-as-creative-hub is certainly on the rise. There are emerging galleries and art districts, as well as well-established venues offering up valuable exhibitions and access to the incredible talent of local, regional, national, and international artists.

Denver Startup Week came to a close September 19, 2014 after five action-packed days where expectations were exceeded for the third straight year and the highest level of participation was achieved. Over 7,800 startup community members engaged in over 180 events celebrating everything entrepreneurial in the Mile High City. With over 700 companies involved in events, seminars and panels over a period of five days, this year’s event saw even more energy, community engagement, enthusiasm and collaboration.

Dubbed the largest free entrepreneurial event of its kind in the entire country, Denver Startup Week 2015 plans are already underway with the event scheduled to take place September 28 – October 2, 2015.

As Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock stated at the Kickoff Breakfast, "Denver has quickly become the 'Startup Capital of the World.' Places like Galvanize, Industry and others have really created this space, along with all of you, and that says Denver is simply the place to be. If you are entrepreneurial, if you are innovative, we want you to bring your humble and creative energies to our great city."